Technology is playing a role in transforming education. With its power to accelerate students' learning, education technology (or EdTech) should put an emphasis on improving the relationship between teachers and students and overall atmosphere in schools, experts say.
At the EdTech Asia Summit held in Bangkok recently, global education experts noted the amount of capital raised in the EdTech sector has rapidly increased and it is expected to continue to grow over the next 10-15 years, particularly in Asia, creating vast opportunities for development.
David Klett. Photo courtesy of EdTech Asia
The seminar in Bangkok -- the first regional event hosted by EdTech Asia -- focused on ecosystem empowerment, knowledge sharing and the growth of EdTech. The seminar brought together key stakeholders in the Asian EdTech entrepreneurship, investment and innovation ecosystems to explore shifting dynamics and trends.
According to Tuan Minh Pham, founder and CEO of Topica, the seminar's keynote speaker, EdTech can shorten distance and time between students and teachers, and eliminate barriers of travel and scheduling.
Citing the WCET Distance Education Enrolment Report 2016, which tracks policy and advocates technology-enhanced learning in the US, Tuan said 28% of college students in the US are taking at least one online course.
"Within 10 years, 50% of students will receive their education online."
Tuan pointed out a survey by Babson Survey Research Group finding that 71% of US chief academic officers believe that online education provides similar or superior result than traditional courses. "Within 10 years, online technology will become a ubiquitous part of all learning activities and make learning much more effective."
Anip Sharma, vice-president of consulting firm Parthenon-EY, said education technology continues to evolve, tracing the transformation of EdTech from digital content in the first wave, to its dot-com second wave and to the present third wave, which involves adaptive learning.
However David Klett, managing director of Klett Group, believes that in the K-12 school system (primary and secondary level) the impact of EdTech is limited, at least in terms of visible improvements and scale.
"Look at the US, where EdTech was welcomed much more frenetically compared to Europe. But improvements are still barely visible on the level of dropout rates etc," said Klett in an interview with Life.
It is rather hard for EdTech to dominate existing methods and routines to educate children, most experts agree. Most EdTech solutions substitute or augment existing approaches. Only few really modify or redefine ways to learn and more important, what can be learned.
EdTech today is helpful to ease a bit of the pain of typical learning challenges such as vocabulary, grammar, calculus, dates and other facts. Several popular solutions such as ABCMouse are, at the end, drill-and-kill-learning environments wrapped in colours, funny sounds and powered by gamification.
"This is good and helpful. But education is so much more," said Klett. "It has to prepare us for a life of productivity and happiness, it has to make us active citizens, engaged workers, optimistic entrepreneurs, caring lovers and friends, careful parents, ready to deal with the challenges life brings us. These things can be learned partially from good teachers and the fruitful social environment of a school. Learning is a cognitive thing. But it is also, and maybe foremost, a social thing.
"Having said this it is more obvious what we should expect from EdTech solutions in the future: they should help to improve the relationship between teachers and students, between students and students and the overall atmosphere of learning and living together in schools."
Klett believes that a good start is to look for EdTech solutions that allow students to be active, to produce things, to create new solutions and to learn what has to be learned along the way.
"Digital devices are creativity machines, they allow us to express ourselves and to create the new. So schools should have a good chance to use this potential and I think there are many that are doing this already."
Klett recently visited St Joseph Thipawan School and he was impressed how the school was shaped and driven by the ideas and principles of its leading head teachers. There are cases in Thailand where schools try to develop as a social system, or as a social body that encloses the child to make him/her grow as a person.
He points out the case of northern European countries and their advanced schooling system. Finland is a big inspiration when it comes to education because the Finnish society is very participative, meaning it's less hierarchical and that students and teachers are working together and consider each other as being equal on some levels.
The idea that the teacher is the knowledgable one and students are there just to list is on the wane. Finland has shown that teachers and students should interact on a different level, which helps students become active citizens -- and to be responsible for their own learning outcome.
In Europe, technology can help teachers move toward that direction. Computers, tablets and handhelds as learning devices are important because they help students access ideas, which they can bring to the classroom and integrate into the learning experience.
In Thailand, for instance, there is a lot of hope that technology can correct some problems in the classroom. And while technology -- computers, hardware and software -- is important, Klett said that at the end it's about teacher training and the need to develop a teaching team is more important.
"Thailand is much more hierarchical than Germany or Finland. I don't want to impose other cultures on Thailand. But if you want to make students active citizens, certain elements of empowerment have to become part of these schools. Without this change, it will be very difficult to make a deep impact."
